I top out around 100 wpm but still rarely bother to push myself to hit my max—and pretty much never when writing code.

I can’t really relate to “I need to type faster!” programmer optimizations, nor complaints about things like static typing slowing people down because it’s a few more characters (more thinking, I’d get, but some folks do seem bothered by the extra keystrokes) since input speed is nowhere near being my bottleneck when I’m writing code.

I suppose there must be people out there who simply think a ton faster than me, and of course some others are much slower typists than me, and for those folks that stuff’s a bigger deal.

> I can’t really relate to “I need to type faster!” programmer optimizations, nor complaints about things like static typing slowing people down because it’s a few more characters...

One common loop in programming is "hypothesize, test, evaluate".

If you're exploring or playing around, the quicker you can execute iterations of this, the more likely it is you'll succeed in what you're trying to do.

In that case, stuff like "unused import is a compiler error" or "static typing required" slows down iteration, so gets in the way of rapid prototyping (or whatever).

"Typing quicker" wouldn't benefit the 'hypothesize' nor 'evaluate' parts, sure, but it'd help you reduce the time it takes to test an idea.

I also see no need to type faster, but as I get older and have more and more RSI-type issues I'm starting to see more and more appeal into being able to type at the same speed with fewer keystrokes.

Always seemed to me like they'd be terrible for programming with all the punctuation though.

I also need a mouse way too much (and I have shakey hands so trackballs/nipple mice are not viable)